


hands and feet

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-25
Updated: 2011-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out in the world he may be almost a man, but he's a boy yet in her arms and she wraps them tightly around him, knowing she can give only a pale shadow of the love he's craved from her mother these many years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hands and feet

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted **[here.](http://honey-wheeler.livejournal.com/120305.html)**

_Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet - Vietnamese Proverb_

 

It’s just one moment. One tiny moment in a sea of them, almost beneath notice.

The scene is commonplace enough. Boys in from training, cheeks red from the cold, eyes bright and spirits run high over their mock battle. Sons standing before a mother, full of pride, eager for approval. A warm smile the reward, leavened by the disapproving fingers that ghost over a bruise. But only for Robb. Only for her trueborn son.

It’s with a sinking feeling that Sansa notices the look on her bastard brother’s face when her mother’s eyes fall upon him, the skittish look of a devoted dog hoping that he will receive a caress instead of a kick. Sansa hates that look. It’s pathetic, she had told Jeyne once. Undignified. And unrealistic besides. Mostly she even believed that. But deep down she knows, in the moments she lets herself examine it, that it’s because it breaks her heart.

Her mother’s eyes rest on Jon for only a moment before sliding past him. Something in Jon crumbles, the proud puff of his chest replaced by a weary hurt before he regains himself. It’s only a moment, but sometimes a moment is all it takes. It would have been better if she’d ignored him entirely, Sansa thinks.

If Septa Mordane finds it odd that she asks for a pan of water and a clean cloth, it doesn’t show. Sansa moves slowly up the stairs, careful not to slosh. Jon’s door is open – he and the other boys seem to have little need for privacy, something Sansa will never understand. He’s just stripped his shirt off over his head when she enters, his back to her as she stands in the door. He’s not quite yet a man, still barely more than a stripling, but the promise of strength is there, visible in the stretch of bones under pale skin, in the sinewy sweep of muscles flanking his spine. Her perfunctory knock on the door has him whirling about.

“Sansa, get out,” he orders, clutching his shirt to his chest like a missish young maid.

“I came to tend your wounds,” she says coolly. He might only look more stunned if it were her lady mother coming to tend to him herself.

“Don’t bother,” he says, collecting his wits. “They’re only scratches.” She ignores him, placing the pan of warm water on the rough-hewn table at his bedside and setting a cloth in it to soak.

“Sit,” she bids him. She says it the same way she hears her mother say it, as if the idea that he might do otherwise is impossible. To her surprise, it works. He sits stiffly on the mattress, his shirt clenched tightly in both fists as if he could use it for a weapon. She works silently, and he sits and waits much the same, the only sounds in the room the soft music of the water as she swirls the cloth in a circle, wrings it out with both hands.

“Father says you’re doing well in your training,” she says, her voice overly loud in the quiet. His eyes flicker away from her. He stares downward, as if something very interesting is stitched into the seams of the shirt he still holds. His only answer is a shrug. Very well. They don’t have to talk. She didn’t come to converse, after all.

The water is warm, but he flinches when she touches it to his temple, as if it were snowmelt. She can see the uncertainty in his eyes, and thinks it’s his confusion that makes him shy from her touch, rather than any discomfort.

It’s an easy enough task to wash his scrapes clean. He sits, patient under her ministrations, completely still even though his dark eyes glimmer in the firelight as they follow her every move. There’s one cut high on his neck, almost at his jaw. The pressure of her thumb on his chin has him tilting his head back automatically, exposing the column of his throat, once smooth but now downed with soft growth. She pats at the scrape with the cloth and then runs a questing fingertip from his earlobe to his chin. He jerks at her touch, eyes snapping to hers.

“It wasn’t so long ago that we were children, was it?” she says, and his smile is honest, genuine. More genuine than she’s seen from him in years. They were closer, once, the two of them. Not as close as he and Arya, to be sure, but close enough. At least they were before growing up got in the way and made life so much more complicated. Before she learned to be embarrassed by who he was.

Perhaps it’s regret for the years since that has her laying a gentle hand on his cheek, or regret for the sister she stopped allowing herself to be. He stiffens, but only for a moment before he leans into her touch. More swiftly that she could have imagined, he drops his face against her belly, his cheek pressed against the flesh that has grown softer of late, more womanly in a way that sometimes frightens her. His fists clench in her skirt, tugging at the fabric, and she hears the sound of what might be a sob muffled against her bodice. Out in the world he may be almost a man, but he's a boy yet in her arms and she wraps them tightly around him, knowing she can give only a pale shadow of the love he's craved from her mother these many years. There are no words in the sounds she coos, only meaningless soothings, his hair soft and springy under her fingers.

She holds him until his breathing slows and smoothes, until his hands no longer clutch at her dress. Then another minute, for good measure. When she steps away, he doesn’t stop her, though he does hold on to her skirt, letting the material run through his fingers until it falls away, dropping heavily against her shins. She busies herself rinsing and wringing out the cloth. He says nothing, but she can feel him watching her, his eyes burning into her back.

Do you remember that time we both took ill? she wants to say. Do you remember how you played spillekins with me, and told me stories when I got lonely, even though I’d pouted and carried on about being confined with you, you of all my brothers? How you knew I loved stories about knights and ladies and love the most, so you told me one after another until I’d heard each one at least three times? I never told you, but I missed those stories when we were well. Oh Jon, I miss them still.

But she doesn’t say any of that. She can’t say it, not without also saying, and do you remember how my mother came only to me, brushing my hair and singing to me, leaving without even a glance at you? Sansa always told herself that such a thing was right, it was how everything should be. Now she wonders how much she really believes such things and how much she just clings to them because to let go after so long would be all too terrifying.

So she says nothing. She’s collected everything and turned to leave when she hears the mattress rustle, feels his hand slide from her elbow to her wrist. Something in it makes her pulse flutter in a way she doesn’t understand.

“Sansa,” he says when she turns back to him. He’s leaning forward off the bed, his elbows on his knees, and the boy is gone again into the almost-man. She raises her eyebrows in question. He seems to struggle with what he wants to say, opening his mouth to start and then closing it again before sighing and just saying, “Thank you.”

She smiles. Impulsively, she leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead, then turns and hurries out the door, her worry at spilling the water gone. It is with a bit of a lighter heart that she leaves. Nothing will have changed, she knows. But maybe things will be a little different nonetheless.


End file.
